If you’re into e-readers, then you’re probably aware of Rakuten Kobo. And if you’re familiar with the name, then you’ve probably heard that it had ended its partnership with Mozilla Pocket, owing to the latter being shut down. The good news is, the Canadian e-reader company has found a replacement service in the form of Instapaper.
As with Pocket, Instapaper is a read-it-later service that allowed Kobo users to send web articles to their e-reader. Currently there’s no exact date as to when the integration will be launched. Instead, the companies did provide a window of “by the end of summer 2025”.
Rakuten Kobo CEO Michael Tamlyn said that “the Pocket sunset was a surprise to many, including us, so we are looking forward to having this great new solution in place as quickly as possible”. It’s probably good news then that, despite the aforementioned launch window, Kobo says that “many former Pocket customers have already successfully made the change to Instapaper”.
Instapaper itself has had an interesting history. Following its acquisition by Pinterest in 2016, it made the benefits of its premium subscription free to all users. Then it regained its independence in 2018 and started charging for Premium features again. Incidentally, the company launched its subscription service, Kobo Plus, locally earlier in the year.
